newsminer.com

Karl Sanford has no illusion that he will win the Homer Jackpot Halibut Derby, but at least he can say he was the first fisherman to sit atop this year’s leader board.

Sanford, an administrator at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, weighed in the first halibut of the season to take the early lead in Alaska’s richest fishing derby.

Sanford caught a 128.8-pound fish on Saturday fishing with Cache A Halibut Charters. As of Tuesday, it was the only fish entered in the derby.

Considering that the last eight derby winners have all been over the 300-pound mark, Sanford’s chances of remaining atop the leader board are slim and none.

“I’m just happy to get on the board,” he said with a laugh. “I expect someone to catch a bigger one pretty soon.”

The Homer derby began on May 1 and runs through Sept. 30. Rough water has kept most of the boats out of the water so far, derby coordinator Paula Frisinger said.

Sanford attested to the rough conditions. He described the weather as “pretty blustery” on Saturday.

“It was brutal,” he said.

Sanford hooked his fish at the end of what had been a long day of fishing for he, his wife, Sandy, and fellow Fairbanksans John and Diann Pearson.

“We were 30 minutes from coming in,” he said.

At first, Sanford thought he had hooked a skate, a stingray-like fish that, like halibut, dwell on the bottom of the ocean and are sometimes caught by halibut fishermen. Sanford had already pulled up a skate in the 150-pound range that took considerable effort, only to release it (skates aren’t considered table fare). The notion of repeating that process wasn’t one he relished.

When he realized he actually had hooked a decent-sized halibut, his mood brightened.

“It was a nice cap to a pretty slow day,” he said, adding that their catch prior to that had consisted of only four or five small, chicken halibut, some cod that they had to release and a few rockfish.

Sanford tries to make a halibut fishing trip to Homer each year, though he usually goes later in the summer.

“We knew going down this early there were no guarantees,” he said.

While he doesn’t stand a chance of winning the derby jackpot, which was $37,243 last year, Sanford does have a shot at a smaller prize if his fish is one of the four biggest weighed in this month.

The derby awards $1,000, $750, $500 and $250, respectively, to the top four fish each month.

Last year, the fourth-largest fish caught in the month of May was 135.8 pounds. The biggest, ironically, was caught by another Fairbanks angler — Janet Warburton — who reeled in a 194.4-pound halibut to win $1,000 for the biggest fish weighed in during May. Warburton got another $500 as the top lady angler for the month.